The anti-phone brigade has been ticked off by the Advertising Standards Authority for running posters declaring that a phone in blokes' jeans could ruin their genes.
The posters, which ran in the toilets at service stations and shopping centres, claimed that "medical experts" are warning that a mobile phone can turn chaps …

Seriously ?

Please do continue....

YOU will be doing the Gene Pool a great favour by removing yourself from it.

were not all nutters BTW.

A lot of those suffering from MicroWave-Sickness are Techies!

Quite a few are EX-Telecoms personnel, who have due to exposure to work related RF Emissions have been permanently disabled by it.

The Symptoms are not pleasant and are aggravated by re-exposure to Pulsed PF fields such as 3G and WiFi.

The Mass Push to roll out (Politically friendly front page news) so called SMART METERS is an easy (but very expensive mistake) as they are not green and wont save power in the long run.

Poisoning everyone with ElectroSmog is not GREEN and will just increase the profits of those PharmaTek that manufacture products to fight Dementia/ADHD/CANCER/CFS/ME/Cronic Insomnia and other related degenerative conditions which are merely a symptom of a sickening population being poisoned at the Genetic Level.

Is it our fault that the communications industry is hell bent on discrediting anyone with views that would effectively put them out of business and into bankruptcy when the real dangers are finally published in full, (which is slowly being carried out by a few dedicated scientists.)

The DoD/MoD and other eastern and western Military have long known about the dangers through lab experiments and practical real world exposure of their Personnel whilst working with Radar and other RF weapon systems. (the Papers from such were published in the 50's, 60's and 70's, but were ignored by anyone outside of the Industry)

The Pro-Comms lobby lot would rather these reports were burned and forgotten.

The Seti Lot have long wondered why they cannot hear anyone out there (in space) quite simple really, an intelligent race gets to analogue RF broadcasting, then discovers digital, gets it genome burnt and either switches over to fiberoptics thereby going dark to outgoing RF transmissions or goes extinct due to too much genetic damage having been inflicted on its population.

proof

"The Seti Lot have long wondered why they cannot hear anyone out there (in space) quite simple really, an intelligent race gets to analogue RF broadcasting, then discovers digital, gets it genome burnt and either switches over to fiberoptics thereby going dark to outgoing RF transmissions or goes extinct due to too much genetic damage having been inflicted on its population."

or that space is vast, and the chances of us pointing our telescopes at the exact spot to pick up weak signals are quite slim? nah, must be a some sort of conspiracy

just turn of the universe

Cough! Splutter!

Yes... OK..

While you make some interesting comparisons, you appear to be totally failing to spot the major flaw in your argument. That flaw is simply this: The systems you mention all output radiation at levels that are many times greater than those output by mobiles). In the case of Radar, it can be many thousands of times greater. The human body is actually rather efficient at coping with small doses of most forms of radiation, even if they are constant. Hence we've been able to deal with the Sun for all this time.

When using a mobile, your body is dealing with milliwatts of radiation. When dealing with Radar or Mobile telecoms base stations, your body would be dealing with Kilowatts of radation, possibly even megawatts. Levels 1,000,000,000 times higher than mobiles.

Why I don't drink.

Idiocy

A phone in a trouser pocket has almost the entire width of the thigh between it and the fertility bits. If there was any actual danger from that, a phone in a top pocket near the heart would be far more dangerous - enough to be noticed and confirmed long ago.

RF ... its worth treating with caution

I once was on-site at several powerful broadcast transmitters (~ 100KW) many years ago and remember a sign which went something like this:

DANGER

HIGH-POWER RADIO-FREQUENCY FLUX BEYOND THIS POINT. NO METAL OBJECTS MAY BE CARRIED FURTHER. YOU MAY NOT ENTER THIS FACILITY IF YOU WEAR A PACEMAKER OR MEDICAL PROSTHESES WITH A METAL CONTENT. UNEXPECTED EFFECTS MAY OCCUR.

Even so, the few tens or hundred milliwatts emitted by my phone isn't going to do me any harm. This advert is complete tosh.

Re: Cardio-vascular AC

Well done ASA

I wonder if the ASA are prepared to do anything about the signs at the front of some churches that similarly make claims which 'lack [the] empirical evidence that most "experts" would require', to the effect that non-believers are doomed, or that attending their services give us access to something spritual?

Or is it one rule for product-bullshitters and another for sky-fairy-bullshitters?

But...

... the Clerics/Muhlahs/Priests will condemn your soul to hell

Mixed domains

Quote: "I wonder if the ASA are prepared to do anything about the signs at the front of some churches that [] attending their services give us access to something spiritual?"

The problem with the EM Radiation Research Trust advertising is that appears to be making a statement of scientific fact backed up by, "empirical evidence that most "experts" would require", when, in fact, it does not. If the trust had made it abundantly clear that this was the opinion of its members, and that it was not backed up by the scientific community as a whole, then it might be accepted.

It seems to me that any statement about anything of a spiritual nature is - by definition - not a scientific statement, given that science is concerned with the material world, which can be made manifest to our senses (in some form or other) and subjected to repeatable, verifiable tests. However, if a religious group made statements which are materially measurable, e.g. "perform [insert religious practice her] and you will become wealthy", then I think they might be exposed to the same scrutiny.

@Flugal - it's about expectation

Picture if you will the offending advert from the article with "Medical experts" replaced by "Religious experts".

I doubt that the ASA would have taken issue with that version, nor would anyone have given it any credence. Amazing thing, context - just one adjective shifts your expectation of the claim that follows.

I've yet to see a sign outside a church containing the word expert. There probably is one, but I'm willing to bet it's used within a bad pun context (Expert Teas?) and thus will not incur the ASA's "wrath". Use of the word Jesus doesn't trigger an empirical expectation for most people.

re: Well done ASA

As to services giving "us access to something spiritual", surely it's possible a service *may* give you access to something spiritual - not necessarily an objective thing, but a thought, a feeling, something personal? Well, not *you*, obviously, but someone?

In any case surely organised religion is so tied up with notions of the collective, and the group, that assuming a given church wasn't a nuisance, no responsible lawmaker would really want to ban all that, which brings a bunch of people together and gives them a sense of community in this atomised age (Scientolologists and other cynics excepted)?

What do the people who pay for these posters hope to gain from these dubious claims anyway?

IT's Called Altruism

We are the Canaries...

We are the few that can actually feel the cancer growing (in us and in society), whilst all of you are carrying on oblivious to it, until you are diagnosed with Terminal Cancer or other Fatally Degenerative Disease, by which time its too late...

The Sheep(you lot!) are too timid to think for themselves(or do the grunt work and research) and actually stand up and say "hang on, what if this is really true and we are on the road to hell (or the abattoir) for the false idol of high technology", but a lot of those that know the truth are afraid to stand up as they know they will be ridiculed (didn't Jesus have the same problem.)

All your false hopes in high technology are going to see...

is the results of your CAT/MRI scan that confirm you have an un-curable CANCER of the brain etc, and you have not long to live.........

EM spectrum emissions

quote: "The Sheep(you lot!) are too timid to think for themselves(or do the grunt work and research) and actually stand up and say "hang on, what if this is really true and we are on the road to hell (or the abattoir) for the false idol of high technology", but a lot of those that know the truth are afraid to stand up as they know they will be ridiculed (didn't Jesus have the same problem.)

All your false hopes in high technology are going to see...

is the results of your CAT/MRI scan that confirm you have an un-curable CANCER of the brain etc, and you have not long to live........."

If you'd be so kind as to provide comparitive strengths between mobile phone output, and ground-level background radiation, plus average (at the planet surface) background radiation during a solar flare (solar maxima?), and show me that a mobile phone is in fact more energetic over time than the background radiation(s) that the species has been subject to for millions of years, then I will be happy to investigate further into a conspiracy theory.

Given that every so often a large enough solar flare is predicted that "might disrupt communications and electronic equipment across the globe" I suspect that the ouput from the Sun is far more capable of destruction than the backround of anthropogenic radiation that we are certainly subjected to on a daily basis. Even when taking our "natural defenses" of a large localised magnetic field into account, we are parked 1AU away from a supermassive nuclear furnace, and have been bathed in EM radiation since life formed on the planet. I am not convinced burning my balls with a mobile will necessarily be substantially more damaging to me than just going for a stroll in the summer sun without taking sunscreen with me.

Of course if there is substantive proof that (for instance) solar flares and cosmic radiation are in fact half as energetic at the skin as a mobile phone, then I will be far more inclined to investigate further :)

@AC

"We are the few that can actually feel the cancer growing"

That reminds me (somewhat loosely) of the story about the entire village who complained of RF sickness following the installation of a mobile base-station in the area. Many complaints were made to the operator, who eventually had to make it clear to these hypochondriacs that the thing hadn't even been turned on yet!!!!

Can't find the link, but the University of Essex were able to reproduce it in a study - http://www.politics.co.uk/reference/mobile-phone-masts

Note

"concluded that short-term exposure to a typical GSM base station-like signal did not affect well-being or physiological functions"

is far more reasonable and balanced a conclusion than

"cancer clusters, clusters of ill-health, depression and even suicide" had been found in proximity to the masts and other wireless sources of microwave radiation"

which reeks of scaremongering!

You are also well aware, I suppose, of the intense radiation and energy being hurled at the entire planet (well half at a time) by our own sun? Orders of magnitude higher powered than what we are pumping out?

But still, don't let numerous _empirical_ studies get in the way of your beliefs!